Assocham urges political parties to end Parliament deadlock

NEW DELHI: Expressing concerns over logjam in Parliament over contentious issues, industry body Assocham today said the current impasse is holding up passage of bills which are crucial for reforms.

The chamber appealed to political parties to sit together and agree at least on minimum economic agenda.

The country is faced with a situation where even the Budget and the Finance Bill got passed without a debate in Parliament, it said.

"Frankly speaking, at times there are several areas of concerns in the Budget which the business and the industry may not point out directly. There should be aggressive and intense debate in Parliament so that the country gets a well-debated Budget," Assocham President Rajkumar Dhoot said.

The BJP, Left and other parties today walked out of the Lok Sabha, charging the government with indulging in one scam after another and saying they would not be party to the passage of the Finance Bill and the Railway Budget.

Assocham said before re-opening of the second leg of the Budget session of Parliament, it was widely believed that some of the bills on subjects like land acquisition on which the government had built in a political consensus would be cleared without any difficult.

"But for that to happen, Parliament has to function and debate must take place. Even in the Land Acquisition Bill, there are crucial issues like the impact on the cost of acquisition from the industry's point of view. These issues should be debated threadbare in Parliament," it said.

One of the reasons for the economic slowdown has been virtual drying up of the capital investment cycle as the investor is not sure about the consumer demand in the wake of high cost of money, global problems in the Europe and the US, it said.

"Under this kind of economic cycle, the economy needs a strong government push and non-partisan political support to reforms," Dhoot said.

Besides the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, the other key bills which are held up include the Insurance Laws for raising the FDI limit to 49 per cent, Companies Bill, Forward Contracts (Regulation) Amendment Bill and the National Food Security Bill, Assocham said.